When it was first suggested to me that I review Paul Fussell’s new book about “class,” I naturally assumed that it was because I have so much of it. But a twenty-minute sojourn with Class: A Guide Through the American Status System[1] was enough to convince me that I have no class whatever. Save your pity, though. According to Mr. Fussell I do not require it. Mr. Fussell discerns the existence of a new class, a set of people who defy categorization, and he makes it quite clear that this is the only class for anyone to aspire to because it is the only one with “class” at all.

Relax. If you are reading this review, then chances are that you, too, are an “X” person, or can easily become one. How do I know? Because Mr. Fussell has invented this “way out” of the class problem especially for you—you and him, that is. Throwing a stylistic arm around the reader’s shoulder, “What about us?” he asks at the beginning of his last chapter: “What class are we in, and what do we feel about our entrapment there?” “Pretty rotten,” I should think, had better be your answer to the second question, unless your answer to the first was an icily hostile “Are you kidding? None of the above!” The groups Mr. Fussell delineates—ranging from Bottom-out-of-sight to Top-out-of-sight, with Destitute, Low prole, Mid-prole, High prole, Middle, Upper-middle and Upper classes in between—are such as no